The present invention relates to a tablet determining method and an apparatus therefor, and more particularly, to a tablet determining method and an apparatus therefor which are adapted to determine ingredients of solid tablets used as medicines, foods, chemicals or the like.
In general, in the manufacturing of a tablet such as a medicine or the like, analysis of the tablet is highly significant in quality control. The determination of ingredients in the tablet is indispensable for ensuring the dose of the tablet.
Conventionally, both non-destructive and destructive tests have been employed for this purpose. The non-destructive test is adapted to measure the weight of the tablet, its diameter, its thickness and the like without breaking it and the destructive test is adapted to measure the properties of the tablet through destruction of the tablet such as fracture, melting or the like. Various tests are carried out separately or successively through a manual operation.
A tablet machine for manufacturing a single-layer tablet is automatically controlled by merely weighing the tablet continuously. However, for a multi-layer tablet comprising a plurality of layers with different gradients for each layer, it is impossible to measure each ingredient. Thus, a troublesome method such as chemical analysis, gas chromatography, liquid chromatography or the like is required for determining the ingredients of the layers of the tablet. For example, the amount of aspirin in a tablet is determined by crushing the tablet, dissolving it in ethyl alcohol to prepare a solution and adding sodium methoxide to the solution to determine the amount of methoxide consumption in the presence of an indicator. The amount of aspirin to be charged in the tablet is manually adjusted depending upon the thus-determined aspirin.
In the manufacturing of such a tablet, it is highly desirable to rationalize the tablet making process and to increase the production capacity. For this purpose, the unmanned automatic operation of the tablet machine is demanded. In order to satisfy such a demand, it is required to accomplish automatic adjustment of the tablet machine. However, as described above, a troublesome method such as liquid-chromatography, chemical analysis or the like which requires much labor and time is required for quality control of the tablet. Even use of an automatic analyzer requires as much as ten minutes or more to analyze one sample (two or three tablets). Also, such an automatic analyzer still requires labor.